all things shall pass, still
by mint repeat
Summary: Love - It knocks you down, it pulls you back up and sometimes, it crushes you and you never get back up again, forever suffocating under its enormous weight. Joe/Stella. Kevin/Stella. JONAS.


a/n- So, Joe/Stella/Kevin. It's experimental and in some parts, it makes no sense at all. I think that's how I want it to be. But my titles makes no sense, so let it slide plizz? Thank you.

Disclaimer – Yes, I obviously own JONAS since I have the power to put the characters through the emotional wringer that is lurve. *snort* Just in case, not my own. (Because I know I find sarcasm hard to comprehend on the internets. I am sure there's some lawyer out there just like that too.)

* * *

**all things shall pass, still.**

//

Kevin falls in love with Stella on a Friday.

//

They are rehearsing for a concert and there's a moment when Kevin looks up from his guitar and looks at her. He just looks and he doesn't know why. She's sitting in front of the stage with Macy by her side and she's hemming a jacket. Macy says something and she laughs and in that moment she looks up, hand in the air and the silver of the needle catches the light and twinkles like a star above her head. The lights shine down upon her from the side and cast a soft slow on her features. Her eyes they shine as she smiled at him, warm and loving and Kevin's breath catches in his throat.

Oh god he's in love. He's falling headlong into a swirling vortex of rainbow colours that are aglow with bright lights. There's a rush of blood up to his head and he can see stars shine _so_ bright.

Psychedelic and glorious, it's everything he ever imagined it would be.

He goes back to strumming the guitar, this time humming along soft and slow.

//

Joe falls in love with Stella on a—_no_, Joe has always been in love with Stella.

//

From when he was a boy of five, it's always been Stella. He may not have known it then and he may not have acknowledged it now but it's always been Stella. There have been other girls, vague and bland but Stella is the constant, always on his mind and never far from his thoughts or his sights.

When he's eighteen, one day they fight and hurl bitter words and ten it hits him. They will always fight and it will always be hard and sometimes they'll crash and burn but he still loves her so _fucking_ much.

He never gets around to telling her though. When he knows he wants to, she's already laughing and smiling at someone else—Kevin—and he fades into the background.

Emotions run riot through him like angry flames eating up chunks of wood with terrifying hisses. At the foremost of all these emotions is betrayal, hot, angry and red. He loved her _first_ and he loved her _best_. She can't do this to him. She can't leave him with hanging, with an incurable longing that feels like his heart is being punctured by needles. At the bottom of this unwieldy ball of emotions is despair, black and oppressive and blinding. He loved her _first_ and he loved her _best_.

But she doesn't.

Emotions soon envelope him and consume him and his skin burns with regret, anger and heartbreak and love gnaws at his bleeding heart like poison shriveling his insides.

Everything burns and for once Joe wishes that everything would stop and just consume him whole. He'd disappear into nothing and nothing is infinitely better than the pain that moves through his veins like shards of glass cutting open tender skin and dotting it with scars and blood.

He cannot go back to the way things were, to the way ignorance was bliss and denial was a safety net.

//

Stella falls in love with Joe on a bright sunny morning when they are seven and he bandages a bleeding knee for her with infinite care and tender concern.

//

There really hasn't been anyone else ever. Joe is the _only_ one. _Was_ the only one. He knows her like the back of his hand. Every thought and emotion that vibrates through Stella's body, he knows of it. In return, Stella _knows_ Joe. Sometimes, even better than her self.

She maps him out in her head like a beautiful and complex piece of art, lovely to look at but infinitely frustrating to understand. Stella knows Joe just like she knows every little beat of her heart when it beats every second of day. For him.

For a few years she lives with a dream, one with a rosy future and blue skies. It carries her through well. Then the fights start, each uglier and far more cruel than the rest and the rosy mist clears and leaves the stench of reality behind. She knows him, she loves him but she cannot go through life with little bits of her heart chipping off each day. Stella sees the world in clear simplicity and love cannot carry you through the ugliness of everything else.

They sing that it moves mountains but Stella knows fairytales and happy endings aren't for everyone. She loves Joe and she isn't giving up on the idea of love but when love disappears under every other petty little thing, maybe it wasn't meant to be.

She _loves_ Joe. She does. She always will.

_That_ will never change.

//

Kevin and Stella kiss on bright blue Sunday with the sand amongst their toes and the gentle waves of the ocean echoing their tender vows of forever.

//

Macy clasps hands with Nick and watches, the beauty of it imprinting it self forever in her minds eye. This is love, not grand and splendid but simple and true that it aches and fills her up with sweet visions of a perfect day where she stands with Nick hand in hand.

It's a chance moment that makes her turn towards her side and the first thing she notices is the stark whitens of Joe's clenched palm which he slowly unfurls. She looks up and see's a smile on his face, genuine and yet she see's the pain and anguish too, set in the lines of his lips and the creases around his eyes.

She cant feel pity but and maybe sympathy is not what he needs but she lays hand on his arm and smiles softly, telling him that everything is not forever and all things shall some day pass.

He smiles back at her and love which brings innocence and hope instead clouds his features with cynicism and jaded disinterest. She swallows her inward sigh and thinks how tragic and beautiful and scary love is sometimes.

It knocks you down, it pulls you back up and sometimes, it crushes you and you never get back up again, forever suffocating under it's enormous weight.

But if he won't hope, she'll do it for him.

Happy endings are for everyone.

Sometimes it takes a while though.

//

Joe still loves Stella on a bright blue Sunday and try as he can, he cannot hate Kevin on the very same morning when he holds hands with the woman Joe loved first and best.

Time passes and Joe lets go of hate and apathy settles in, sometime intermingled with pain. In all honesty, Kevin and Stella never made a move until he knew and said yes. He didn't want to though. At that time, he hated them so and he didn't want too. A part of him wanted them to suffer for their betrayal. And he tried. He tried to hard to make them suffer.

And he saw them suffer and he saw them smile while they suffered. It didn't take away the hate but it wracked him with guilt.

So he said yes.

Because he loves them both and he hates them a little but more than that he loves them both.

Macy touches his arm gently and smiles, soft and strong but it doesn't stir anything much anything within him. He smiles back at her though, grateful for understanding that his soul sometimes feels spilt into two halves, each being pulled in different directions. He loves them, he hates them. They love him, he hates himself, and he cannot put it back together again. It feels irrevocable somewhere deep within his consciousness.

Life will move and he will live it but he's not sure he can let go yet.

All things should pass.

He's waiting _still_.

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a/n- So yeah, poor Joe. I have given him several imaginary hugs and even an icon to make up for his descent into the depths of despair (alliteration ahoy!). WHAT MORE CAN I DO? Anyhoo, I SHALL spam you all this weekend. Because there's a Kevin/Macy I need to post and more tags. :D


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